Bars on Mars

Ahoy once again! This time, I was inspired by a system creating challenge in the community of a youtuber TTRPG designer JFace Games. On his discord server, people tend to roll a couple of random tables for several themes, and then see what comes out of it. This time, the challenge prompts were: modern, sci-fi, scoundrel (like Firefly), diplomatic, and must use a d8. Upon reading these, I had two thoughts that I needed to resolve quickly and surely enough did. "How am I going to make this sci-fi and not cyberpunk?" Well, the answer is simple enough: aliens. Just situate it on not-Earth, fill it up with alien species, have a blast. Well, that'll be difficult to fit into 200 words on its own (though the challenge isn't to write just 200 words, that's a restriction I kept for myself). Now a bigger question: how to combine the scoundrel prompt with diplomatic matters? Well, my answer was simple, and it was illegal substances. It's not a perfect answer, but I ran with it, and created this game. Since it was made for a challenge, I also gave it a bit more flourish with a one page RPG treatment, with an image, and some experiments regarding the formatting.

I hope you'll enjoy this, and have a nice day!

Fun fact: making the rules and the PDF took me about 33 hours and 22 minutes of total time. I was on a roll this one time!

Bars on Mars

You sell narcs in Mars city bars to humans and aliens alike.

GM names and describes the city. GM and all players name and describe strengths of one alien species each and one narc each. Then, everyone gives one downside to their right neighbor's alien species, and one downside to their left neighbor's narc.

Describe your character. They get:

• a Number (between 5 and 13, your choice),
• 8 + 2d8 megacredits,
• species,
• two narcs they specialize in,
• a weapon,
• and their love (not money).

At the start of a day, everyone's Presence is 0, and GM rolls 1d8 to get every narc's current cost. You can get narcs you specialize in for half the price (round up).

Take turns clockwise. When GM tells you, roll 2d8. Reroll either die once when receiving help. Your character succeeds if the result is:

• ≤ their Number and they're selling, lying, or pushing.
• ≥ their Number and they're running, sneaking, or cautious.

Identical number on both dice increases your current Presence by 1. Laying low lowers it. GM picks the threat: competing dealer gang, or lawkeepers.

• 0. Safe
• 1. Tracking you
• 2. Following you
• 3. Catching you
• 4. Caught you
• 5. Killed you

The first image won mainly because I could include more of its stuff in a vertical game page. This one is a cooler, calmer bar.
Alien Bar by KangJason

If some parts of this design seem familiar, that's because they are. I must admit, I really really grew to enjoy the combination of Lasers and Feelings' conflict resolution mechanic with rolling either above or below a number, and with my extra outcome mechanic from Double the Zombies of "something unrelated happens if both dice are the same". Frankly, this is mostly a numbers game still, but I try to add at least some roleplay-ability with the requirement for a character to have a love that isn't money. It's left up to the reader whether that's another character, some activity, a place, or even an item.

My final piece of inspiration for the mechanics has a surprisingly nostalgic source for me, the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Specifically, its Exhaustion rules that came with six levels were kind of inspiring. After I wrote up the levels of Presence in my game, I realized they sort of reflect those, and also that I'm not the first one to come up with this idea. Wild!

I also used this as a learning opportunity to experiment a little with visual design. A crooked box, neon glow letters, colored highlights and a numbered list that flows between colors, it's not a design I am perfectly happy with but it was meant to be an experiment.

Huh, the October is just around the corner. I should get ready to write up the blog post about the design of my reworked slasher horror TTRPG, and prepare the October TTRPG. Time is ticking. Until then, have a great day!